page_title: Well
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Well / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Exhibit in the Östasiatiska museet, Stockholm, Sweden. This artwork is old enough so that it is in the public domain. Photography was permitted in the museum without restriction. This is a photo of an artwork at the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities in Sweden with the identifier: K-11000-003
context_page_description: A well is an excavation or structure created in the ground by digging, driving, or drilling to access liquid resources, usually water. The oldest and most common kind of well is a water well, to access groundwater in underground aquifers. The well water is drawn up by a pump, or using containers, such as buckets, that are raised mechanically or by hand. Water can also be injected back into the aquifer through the well. Wells were first constructed at least eight thousand years ago and historically vary in construction from a simple scoop in the sediment of a dry watercourse to the qanats of Iran, and the stepwells and sakiehs of India. Placing a lining in the well shaft helps create stability, and linings of wood or wickerwork date back at least as far as the Iron Age.
  Wells have traditionally been sunk by hand digging, as is the case in rural areas of the developing world. These wells are inexpensive and low-tech as they use mostly manual labour, and the structure can be lined with brick or stone as the excavation proceeds. A more modern method called caissoning uses pre-cast reinforced concrete well rings that are lowered into the hole.
context_section_description: Wood-lined wells are known from the early Neolithic Linear Pottery culture, for example in Ostrov, Czech Republic, dated 5265 BC, Kückhoven (an outlying centre of Erkelenz), dated 5090 BC and Eythra, dated 5200 BC in Schletz (an outlying centre of Asparn an der Zaya) in Austria.
  Some of the earliest evidence of water wells are located in China. The neolithic Chinese discovered and made extensive use of deep drilled groundwater for drinking. The Chinese text The Book of Changes, originally a divination text of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046 -771 BC), contains an entry describing how the ancient Chinese maintained their wells and protected their sources of water. Archaeological evidence and old Chinese documents reveal that the prehistoric and ancient Chinese had the aptitude and skills for digging deep water wells for drinking water as early as 6000 to 7000 years ago. A well excavated at the Hemedu excavation site was believed to have been built during the neolithic era. The well was cased by four rows of logs with a square frame attached to them at the top of the well. 60 additional tile wells southwest of Beijing are also believed to have been built around 600 BC for drinking and irrigation.
  In Egypt, shadoofs and sakias are used. The sakia is much more efficient, as it can bring up water from a depth of 10 metres (versus the 3 metres of the shadoof). The sakia is the Egyptian version of the noria. Some of the world's oldest known wells, located in Cyprus, date to 9000-10,500 BC. Two wells from the Neolithic period, around 6500 BC, have been discovered in Israel. One is in Atlit, on the northern coast of Israel, and the other is the Jezreel Valley.
  Wells for other purposes came along much later, historically. The first recorded salt well was dug in the Sichuan province of China around 2,250 years ago. This was the first time that ancient water well technology was applied successfully for the exploitation of salt, and marked the beginning of Sichuan's salt drilling industry. The earliest known oil wells were also drilled in China, in 347 CE. These wells had depths of up to about 240 metres (790 ft) and were drilled using bits attached to bamboo poles. The oil was burned to evaporate brine and produce salt. By the 10th century, extensive bamboo pipelines connected oil wells with salt springs. The ancient records of China and Japan are said to contain many allusions to the use of natural gas for lighting and heating. Petroleum was known as Burning water in Japan in the 7th century.
caption: A Chinese ceramic model of a well with a water pulley system, excavated from a tomb of the Han Dynasty (202 BC - 220 AD) period
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "", "Image Make": "SONY", "Image Model": "DSC-RX100M3", "Image XResolution": "350", "Image YResolution": "350", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "DSC-RX100M3 v1.00", "Image DateTime": "2015:07:18 09:31:15", "Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "296", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 51, 48, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "20948", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5624", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/13", "EXIF FNumber": "5/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "3200", "EXIF SensitivityType": "Recommended Exposure Index", "EXIF RecommendedExposureIndex": "3200", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0230", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:09:13 07:05:00", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2014:09:13 07:05:00", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "-4333/1280", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "169/64", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "1051/100", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3648", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "5247", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "5472", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "3648", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "20800", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF DigitalZoomRatio": "1", "EXIF FocalLengthIn35mmFilm": "29", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Contrast": "Normal", "EXIF Saturation": "Normal", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "1459915ff8b9b2b71846a8c3bab008be", "EXIF LensSpecification": "[44/5, 257/10, 9/5, 14/5]"}